THE IRON ORES OF EAST TEXAS. 65 



ECONOMIC GEOLOGY. 



THE IRON ORES OF EAST TEXAS. 



The Iron Ores of East Texas all belong to the class of Brown Hematite 

 (Limonite). Though they have been known ever since this region was orig- 

 inally settled by Americans, over fifty years ago, and have been and are 

 still worked on a small scale, it has only been in the last few years that they 

 have begun to attract the serious attention of iron manufacturers. Until 

 then the railroad facilities were too few, and the markets too far away, to 

 allow of the ores being utilized. But now railroads are much more numer- 

 ous, and every year new lines are being pushed into hitherto inaccessible 

 regions. Local markets in many of the towns of the State, and throughout 

 the Southwest generally, are springing up, and the demand for pig iron is 

 daily increasing. The population of the country is growing rapidly, and labor 

 is becoming much more plentiful, and consequently cheaper, than ten years 

 ago. The result of this is that iron manufacturers are now looking to Texas 

 as a source of supply of ore for this region. These ores were worked on a 

 small scale before, during, and shortly after the Civil War, at several small 

 furnaces is East Texas. Most of them are now in ruins, or are rapidly ap- 

 proaching that condition. Among them were the Nash and Sulphur Forks 

 furnaces, in Cass County; the well known Loo Ellen (or Kelly) furnace, in 

 Marion County; and the Filleo and Young furnaces, in Cherokee County. 

 Shumard,* in 1859, speaks of the Nash furnace as having been erected 

 "several years since," and it was probably the first furnace ever in blast in 

 the State of Texas. At present the only furnace working in the State is one 

 of twenty-five tons capacity at the State Penitentiary, near Busk. This pro- 

 duces an excellent grade of pig iron, which is largely used at the car wheel 

 works in Marshall, Texas. Lately, however, two companies have bought up 

 extensive tracts of iron lands, with the object of manufacturing pig iron. 

 One of these, the Cherokee Land and Iron Company, has located furnaces 

 at the town of New Birmingham, one and a half miles southeast of Rusk, 

 Cherokee County. The other, the Lone Star Iron Company, is building 

 furnaces at Jefferson, in Marion County. 



The mode of occurrence and the associations of the iron ores differ con- 

 siderably in the different districts, and therefore, for the sake of convenience 



*Eirst Report of Progress of the Geological and Agricultural Survey of Texas, B. F. Shu- 

 mard, 1859. 



